O'Brien plotting fairytale finale for City Of Troy in Del Mar
AMERICA-BOUND: City Of Troy and rider Rachael Richardson at Ballydoyle on Monday. Picture: Healy Racing
City Of Troy, that colt who promised so much for owners Michael Tabor, Derrick Smith, and Mrs John Magnier, never quite fulfilled that early potential. Initial success soon met its limitations and what might have been just never was. In horse racing, it happens all the time.
Of course, that was in 2005/6 when the original but not best incarnation of City Of Troy, the one trained by the legendary Michael Stoute, made a most promising start to his career, winning on debut and following up before coming up a little short in a Group 2 on his final start at two.
Perhaps the Grand Lodge colt didn’t quite have the world at his feet, but there was distinct promise from that juvenile season, and expectation would have been quite high for better to come in his three-year-old season.
However, his return was quite inauspicious, and two more efforts only marginally better. That version of City Of Troy left the racing scene soon afterwards, having reached a none-too-shabby rating of 102 but never quite having made the grade.
That scenario, albeit at a significantly heightened level, threatened to repeat itself almost 20 years on when the second edition, the Justify colt with the perfect juvenile record, trailed in a disappointing ninth of 11 behind Notable Speech in this season’s Newmarket 2000 Guineas.
There was a rush to run him down, consign him to the ‘what could have been’ bin, but his trainer, Aidan O’Brien, never lost faith. It was inevitable he was doing to defend the colt whose two-year-old season had climaxed with a Dewhurst victory and earned him a rating of 125 and, with it, the title of Champion Juvenile of 2023. However, the step between faith and evidence can be a big one, and only subsequent efforts would reveal the truth.
And how emphatic has the subsequent success been.
Coinciding with City Of Troy’s upsurge in fortune has been a lift in the stable’s fortunes, and along with his Epsom Derby, Coral-Eclipse, and Juddmonte International victories have been a Coronation Stakes, Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, a Queen’s Vase, Ribblesdale, Ascot Gold Cup, Airlie Stud Stakes, Railway Stakes, Irish Derby, July Stakes, Curragh Cup, Goodwood Cup, Great Voltigeur, Nassau Stakes, Prix Morny, Yorkshire Oaks, Futurity, and Debutante Stakes, to name just the Group 1 and Group 2 successes collected by his stablemates.
Few high-profile races have thus-far eluded O’Brien but for what will be City Of Troy’s last appearance on a racetrack before stud duties take over, he is hoping a first Breeders’ Cup Classic will come his way.
“We’ve tried very hard, a lot of times, for 25 years, but we’ve never won it,” said O’Brien. “It’s a very difficult race to win. You’re going to a different world, a different culture, a different track, a different surface. Everything is different, and it’s very tough.
“For one of our horses to win it, it has to be a lot better than the opposition, I think. It’s one of those races you don’t dream about because it’s so difficult, but you try, and you hope.
“Every year you tweak things and look for different horses and different ways of doing it. You look under every stone you can look under and then hopefully you’ve looked under enough of them. You saw what happened in the Guineas this year — the one stone I hadn’t looked under came and got us.”
While a prep workout at Southwell will come between now and the trip to Del Mar, last month’s Juddmonte International performance has his trainer believing that skipping the Champion Stakes on Irish Champions Weekend at Leopardstown is the right course for his star pupil.
“If we went there, we might use up that run, and that’s why we thought we might go to Southwell instead,” O’Brien explained. “We went with Giant’s Causeway and got beaten — we got beaten with everything — so we have to tweak a little bit and maybe leaving him a shade fresher (will work), so that’s what we’re hoping.
"It took us a long time to get back after what happened in his first run (in the Guineas). We had to do things very subtly, without him even knowing it, to keep him coming forward. It took us a long time to get back to York. We felt we were close at York, but it's about the next time.
"He took York very, very well. He didn't even blow. He never really got into full tempo. He's a hardy customer and he'll maul you if you maul him. He's not for kids. He's very unusual and he's not simple.
"He has a lot of Justify in him and he has a lot of Galileo in him as well, none of those are wimps. He's hardy. If you're restricting him, he'll make you suffer.
“He always favoured racing aggressively, and that’s why, from day one, he always went out the gates and went. It’s in his nature to do it. What’s rare about him is that he carries it through.
“You’d imagine the faster they go, the better it will suit him, but our fast is a little bit different to American fast. It will be interesting, and we’ll watch with great interest like everyone else.
"He's very unique. He's a different kind of a horse and I'd imagine he'll have to go off to stud. He's just so different. He's not too big and not too small, so he's perfectly proportioned and balanced. He's not extreme in any way.”
